Todd Phillips’ upcoming “Joker” movie is not a Joker origin story as much as it is a crazy clown dude movie. [Empire] I am fine with that. I am also fine with the term “origin story” not being used ever again for this movie because, according to its director, it will actually be a total reinterpretation of the Joker character, hell, I doubt the word “Batman” will even be uttered in the screenplay (and all the better for it). I was actually sent a script of the film, which I will be reading this coming week, but I am quite excited for this movie, being a major Joaquin Phoenix fan — the guy is an absolute genius, maybe the best living actor of the last decade .. but those sentiments belong in a whole other end-of-the-decade piece I’m currently working on.
“We didn’t follow anything from the comic-books, which people are gonna be mad about,” the writer-director tells Empire. “We just wrote our own version of where a guy like Joker might come from. That’s what was interesting to me. We’re not even doing Joker, but the story of becoming Joker. It’s about this man.”